Founded 2005! Weirdness. Unmapped roads. Whispering rocks. Deadening fog. Ghost pirates. Lonely islands. THINGS in the WOODS. Home of Stephen King, Rick Hautala, and Glenn Chadbourne. A place where the four seasons really know how to live. Maine: the way life should be!
This site is a nexus for conversation about Maine's unique strangeness. History, mysteries, legends, current events, cryptozoology, & more.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Jumping Frenchman Disease

Well I thought I'd heard everything, until I read an interview with Nancy Butcher, author of The Strange Case of the Walking Corpse, and discovered this lively disorder. To wit:

"Being extremely startled by an unexpected noise or sight is the main characteristic of the disorder with the peculiar name of Jumping Frenchmen of Maine.

It's not just bolting when someone sneaks up behind you, explains Butcher. Patients with the disorder flail their arms, cry out and repeat words. First identified in some of Maine's lumberjacks of French-Canadian origin, the odd reflex has been identified in other parts of the world, too."

Hmm... I wonder what scared them so much, hmm??? I bet there are some interesting stories from the dark of the Maine woods, which were echoing for the first time with men's axes and saws, plundered and enraged out of their aeons-long solitude.

Of note is this interesting phenomenon: "In response to sudden sensory input, abnormal reaction occurred. For example, if one of them was abruptly asked to strike another, he would do so without hesitation, even if it was his mother and he had an ax in his hand." Affected persons were known commonly as "jumpers."

It was Beard's studies (mentioned above, circa 1880) that encouraged Gilles de la Tourette to study similar behavior that led to his discovery of what is now known as Tourette's Syndrome.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease has been explained as operant conditioning.

A new site, psychology project, has identified the source of stimulus to cause operant conditioning.

The phenomenon to cause exposure to Subliminal Distraction was discovered in the 1960's when office workers using newly designed close-spaced workstations began having mental breaks. The Cubicle solved that problem.

Those designers and psychologists made a mistake. They thought they had created the problem for the first time and that it could only happen in a business office.

JFMD is proof that this is not true. There have been several incidents like JFMD that show the phenomenon can produce several psychiatric outcomes, depression, fear, paranoia, as well as somatic complaints. (Belgian Polar Expedition of 1989, and mental breaks on Russian space missions, Soyuz 21.